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I am surprised Valve, any company really, doesn't have this included in there TOS from the get go, given the damages a class action lawsuit can bring to a company. The majority of customers don't care and can't even be bothered to read the agreement. There is hardly a downside, this clause can only improve their bottom line.

PayPal's decision to offer financial incentives to researchers follows the establishment of similar programs by companies including Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Barracuda and others. Google's bug bounty program may be the most well-known and comprehensive, as it includes bugs not just in its software products such as Chrome, but also its Web properties. The company has paid out more than $400,000 in rewards to researchers since the program began and researchers who consistently find bugs in Google's products can make a nice side income off the program.

Now PayPal is entering the fray at a time when financial fraud and attacks against high-profile Web sites are at a fever pitch. The company's top security official said that he believes PayPal is the first financial services company to start such a program."Link to Original Source

Amelia G writes "Gothic.Org details how Trend Micro has classified the gothic beauty and fashion site as adult and refused repeated requests for reclassification. Nobody has the bandwidth to sort through every media thing thrown at them today, but the problem is that mega-corps are being given the explicit power to determine what we can and cannot learn about, what ideas we may be exposed to, what the delineations of common human knowledge will be. Maybe whether or not one can easily view pictures of black couture and heavy eyeliner is not terribly important. But who gets to decide where the line is where the issue becomes too important to permit censorship of it? If you look at it just right, it is kinda funny that the dystopian, groupthink, panopticon future once feared will come about, not via jackboots on the ground, but for the sake of convenience. Is quasi-voluntary censorship by private companies better or worse than government censorship? Could filtering technology be personalized enough to avoid the biases of individuals working for companies or governments?"Link to Original Source

First time accepted submitter Burdell writes "A new startup has technology to read fingerprints from up to 6 meters away. IDair currently sells to the military, but they are beta testing it with a chain of 24-hour fitness centers that want to restrict sharing of access cards. IDair also wants to sell this to retail stores and credit card companies as a replacement for physical cards. Lee Tien from the EFF notes that the security of such fingerprint databases is a privacy concern."
Since the last time this technology was mentioned more than a year ago, it seems that the claimed range for reading has tripled, and the fingerprint reader business has been spun off from the company at which development started.

blitzkrieg3 (995849) writes "Classrooms all around the country are being fitted with one to one laptop programs, networking hardware, digital projectors, and other technology in order to stay competitive in the 21st century. Kyrene school district spent $3 million modernizing their classrooms. The problem? The increase in spending doesn't lead to an increase in test scores. Policy makers calling for high tech classrooms, including former execs from HP, Apple, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, want to increase technology investment despite the results. Others are not so sure, or think it is an outright waste of money."Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "The National Security Agency has submitted a new database, Accumulo, to the Apache Foundation for incubation. Accumulo is based on the original BigTable paper with some extensions such as the ability to provide cell-level security. It appears there are some hurdles that must be cleared concerning copyright before the project could be accepted."Link to Original Source

By "Set up" i meant there are a number of significant barriers to getting a third party elected. The main parties have done a good job at boxing out minority groups. Media coverage ignores them. Ballot laws are an obstacle for them to get listed. Our voting system of all or nothing makes voting third party a waist of time. Third party candidates aren't aren't even invited to the debates. The libertarian party has been struggling with this for a long time.
It is far easier to change the ideology of the majority parties. There goals aren't set in stone and have changed considerably from when they were started.

The U.S. isn't setup for more than a two party system. Starting a new party would be a wast of time, no one other than a handful full of local politicians would get elected. The liberal party is your closest bet, That would still be a long shot as our culture is setup on the good old boys mentality. It is easier to influence a smaller group than the whole country. it's all about who you know, younger generations join the groups they best connect with. Friendships are made, and influence is a matter of fact. you are who your friends are. Change takes time and the tea party knows what they are doing. Historically, are major party's have changed ideology considerably.

Unfortunitly my gass pump does. They are now putting tvs on top of the pumps to annoy you with ads often at a high volume. One of the worst new developments to make a few extra advertising dollars. I avoid those gas stations when ever posible. Yet, I worry they will soon be everrywhere.

Google's ads have been pointless for a long time. I don't understand how they make as much revenue as they do with ads that no one, or at least not anyone I know clicking on them. The ads are mostly spam and scams. Their text format is bad too. I rarely click on ads but those that I do are usualy non flash banners, or I'll unknowingly read a paid for review. A few key word lines of text doesn't have the click me afpeal that oither ad options do. It is about time they cleaned up their advertisers and made them more relevent.

Quick warning here, by correcting yourself you significantly reduce the odds of entertaining replies, thus reducing the odds of a coffee-spew-on-screen, thus reducing the number of new monitors needed. You sir, are wrecking the economy.